All Ethics, All the Time

With the city manager's Wal-Mart conflict-of-interest rapidly receding into the rear-view, garnering the hearty shrug at City Hall we feared it would, comes word of a different type of conflict-of-interest, this too involving the rapacious retailer. Yesterday, the Austin Business Journal described local advertisers GSD&M's decision not to again pursue Wal-Mart's newly open advertising contract. The offending passage:

"GSD&M had long handled the retailer's advertising account, along with independent Bernstein-Rein Advertising Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., but the Wal-Mart account came up for review in May. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) chose Interpublic Group of Companies' Draft FCB and Aegis Group's Carat for the account, but recently reopened the bid for its $580 million creative and media account because of a scandal involving a top Wal-Mart executive who was fired for inappropriate behavior, including accepting gifts from companies vying to become Wal-Mart's advertising agency."

Oops!

UPDATE: Here's GSD&M's Roy Spence, in a story in today's New York Times:

“We helped build Wal-Mart from $11 billion in sales to $312 billion,” said Mr. Spence, who worked closely for many years with Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart.

“We declare victory,” he added. “And we are moving on.”

Excuse us while we go projectile retch.